Price of Guilt
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: Youji is attacked mentally and ends up going over a cliff... Ken goes to Hell to save him.


Price of Guilt By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kruez or Youji, Ken, Aya, or Omi. I do own the story, but I don't own the River Styx.  
  
Warnings: this story contains themes of suicide, forgiveness, and redemption.  
  
Price of Guilt  
  
It didn't start with Asuka. It had started way before that. Youji felt like he could be a hundred years old, as if the black tears of self-hate could run back through a dozen previous lives.  
  
Alone on the edge, feet on solid ground, but his thoughts were over, in the air, falling towards the river. There was a calm sense of peace. This was it. This was the real time. Youji held out both arms, fingers spreading in the wind.  
  
Barefoot on the dawn dampened grass, the hems of his jeans cool against the skin of his ankles, Youji tried to find reasons why he couldn't fly. Tears soaked into his tee-shirt, hot when they first hit, but chilling so quickly. He didn't want to die. There was just such a tiny silver thread of hope, of escape from the guilt and sorrow, the pain that was suffocating him. His continuing to live was only going to cause problems for the people he cared about. He was such a fucking pain in the ass.  
  
He took one more step towards the edge. As if nature itself were against him, wind picked up, pressed against him, whipping dark curls around his face, neck.  
  
It was the first death that he couldn't deal with. Before Asuka. Before all the one's he'd strangled as a part of Weiss. It was the one he could never tell about. It felt so good to have just his toes free of the ground, arms wide out.  
  
Love? What was that? Someone who would look right into his soul, hold his hand despite the darkness? Give it one more day, part of him whispered, just give it one more day. He leaned his head back, let the wind scour away his tears. One more day? Payment, retribution, now, not tomorrow, no more running, no more holding on.  
  
Eyes closed, he could see Aya's frown, the solid intelligence and the powerful personality he so respected. Omi's tender, wiser than he really was smile, could hear the words, Youji-kun? What are you doing?  
  
It was selfishness, he knew, to fly tonight. If he stayed, maybe he could buy one of their lives sometime, trade his for theirs. He could do good things for them. He could take all their shifts at the flower shop, do all the work, let them sleep in. The ground was just barely under the balls of his feet now. Ken would be the angriest, he thought. "I'm sorry," he whispered into the wind.  
  
There was no one coming to save him though, no one really going to cry over this. One slow breath, and then, leaning forward, he fell. Eyes closed, arms out, legs spread, like diving from a plane, he spun into the canyon.  
  
Then he hit the wall, rocks, sharp and hard, unforgiving tore into shoulder, face, rolling him. Rock narrow and hard punched into his back, crunching bone, exploding pain like white hot cracks in the ice of his soul. Lack of breath held his scream, filled his mouth with blood. Above on the cliff, he thought he saw brown hair, fingers bent like claws at the distance between them, a distance that could never be crossed again. Ken's scream tore the wind as Youji slipped from the rock outcrop and dropped towards the river, falling like a broken rag doll now. Thoughts clogging, fading blood failed to reach his brain, Youji wished there was a way to cross the distance between them, wished it wasn't Ken's screams echoing down after him.  
  
"The future, the present, the past, they're all cousins," a smooth voice said behind Ken.  
  
He spun, throat raw from screaming as he watched Youji fall. The last person he expected to find behind him was Brad Crawford and a guy in black with a long brown braid. Furious, Ken clenched his fists. "Bastard! You fucking bastard! Why didn't you stop him?"  
  
The braided guy rolled his eyes. "Don't be an ass. We came to help, not get in a fight."  
  
"Who the hell are you?" Ken snarled, so tempted to look back over the cliff into the river canyon, but afraid to turn his back on Crawford and his friend.  
  
"I'm Shinigami. This is my soulbond, Brad Crawford. Woulda thought you'd know him."  
  
"I know him," Ken spat, spittle just missing one polished black shoe. "Did your red headed spider mentally push Youji, or what?"  
  
"Actually," Crawford's smooth voice competed with the twilight for elegance and natural grace, "Yes, he did, and I didn't stop him. This is why I've come to make amends."  
  
"Come from where? Back from hell? Fuck you! Just fuck you," Ken screamed, then turned his back to them, hand over his mouth. Youji was somewhere below, too far away to be seen. "How are you going to make amends, Crawford? Can you bring him back?"  
  
"He can't," Shinigami said, "but I can."  
  
Ken spun back around, sudden hope in his eyes. "You can? You're fucking with me, trying to send me over the edge after him!"  
  
Crawford looked decidedly uncomfortable and the man next to him took his hand, gave it a light squeeze. The love between them thickened the air. It was a love that seemed completely out of place associated with a member of Schwartz. "That is not happening today," Crawford said. "Try to understand, Mr. Hidaka, sometimes a life is lucky enough to meet someone who can reach through the hardened defenses. A heart must be very selective, very careful, trust only where it is truly justified, but a love may come that will heal the soul. I have been that fortunate. I can not say if Kudou will be, or if he will take another leap, but," Crawford paused, perhaps signaled by a touch from the man with him.  
  
"Look, he didn't want to die, not really. If he had, I'd just take him and be done with it. What he wants is a way out of the pain he's in. You're his friend. You can do that. Second chances are very rare, Ken Hidaka."  
  
"What do I have to do?" Ken said, numb, sure that talking to Crawford and his like was insanity, but not having any idea what else to do.  
  
Crawford's friend tossed something towards Ken, and instinct made him reach out and catch it. Just a clock, an old fashioned pocked watch on the outside.  
  
"Open it," Shinigami instructed.  
  
Ken had to fiddle with it for a bit to get open, but then there was a timer with two hours set on it, nice blue digital numbers. "What the hell?"  
  
"Exactly," Crawford said.  
  
Shinigami squatted down, finger tracing a dark red lingering light over the grass. "Youji Kudou is dead. You want him back, you'll have to go to hell to get him. You have two hours. As long as that clock is ticking down, nothing will, uh, molest you. If you run out of time, you'll have to fight your way back. He's dead, I doubt he's gonna recognize you. You can't bring him by force, but remember. He doesn't really want to be dead, so you just have to remind him a little."  
  
"I don't believe in Hell," Ken said, looking at the watch, the symbol drawn on the grass, back at the watch.  
  
"Really? I thought everyone in this time period did. You do believe in an after life?"  
  
"I want to," Ken said. "Is Youji in pain?"  
  
"No more than he has been for years. The soul is in the same state, living or dead. It's just that alive, a person has the choice to change it, to heal. The dead take centuries to heal and it's a hell of a lot harder."  
  
"No short term memory," Crawford explained.  
  
"How would you know? You been dead?"  
  
"Yes. That's when I met Duo. Your clock is ticking, Hidaka." Crawford said, hardly warmer than the Crawford that Ken knew. But he was right, there was a whole minute missing.  
  
Shinigami pulled tight the blood red light, snapping a portal open in the grass. As if it were a joke, softened only by a genuine kindness in violet eyes, he said, "Go to hell, Hidaka-san."  
  
Unsure of everything, just wanting his friend back, Ken ran, until the ground fell away under his feet, and he found himself falling, down the same path that Youji had falling. Youji's tears smacked into him and he found himself to be just a spirit, falling with Youji towards the water. When Youji crashed into the rocks, Ken saw clearly the grief and fear, the pain, blood spitting from his mouth. He saw Youji looking back towards the top of the cliff, saw himself screaming, then had to dive to keep up with the much more rapid decent of his friend.  
  
He knew, distantly, that Youji was still alive! Battered, but living, and if he could just break his fall, just save him somehow! But the fall grew faster, and Ken had to race through the air to keep up with the tumbling spinning body of his friend.  
  
Rocks caught Youji below, splattering them red like a balloon filled with red paint, just red paint. Ken dove, terrified that if Youji slipped under the water of the river, he'd never find him. Slowly the river tugged at limp long legs, tugging Youji from the rocks and into the water. Ken's spirit form caught his hand just as the current had got the better of him.  
  
Youji's fingers, so broken, bloody, the kind of broken that makes one's mind refuse to believe they're human, closed around Ken's wrist without strength. Ken, using both hands, grabbed onto Youji's wrist, refusing to let him go, sitting in Youji's splattered blood, holding to him even as he slipped towards the water himself.  
  
Suddenly, the long haired man was next to him, smiling, so gentle. "Remember always," he said, "Everyone can be saved. Maybe not by you, maybe not when you want it, but everyone can be saved." Then he winked, as if the wisdom was just too much to bear, all in one shot. "Welcome to the afterlife!"  
  
Water hit Ken, colder than he had words to describe, black like liquid night, and nothing at all like the river that he and Youji had fallen into. He got his arms around Youji, trying to get the lanky man over on his back, head out of the water. He refused to think about the crushed back of Youji's skull, the stillness of his chest.  
  
When he thought about the pocket watch, the numbers appeared in his mind. One hour, fifty-eight minutes, two seconds. "Youji! Wake up!"  
  
A man standing on the rocks, long wool robes, dark face, middle eastern, but somehow familar snorted, "Hidaka thinks he can raise the dead!"  
  
Ken held onto Youji tighter and they both sank below the surface. Under the water, a dozen scenes from Ken's life hit him, childhood, his first Weiss kill, Kaze, the time he'd jacked off thinking about Youji, one after the other, so real that he didn't even know they were just memories. He gasped when his release hit him, calling Youji's name in the memory and water, black ink ran into his mouth, bringing him memories of being a girl shoved into a train cargo car, then of being a naked boy jumping over a bull, so many dreams, so vivid and in most of them he was only a child, never older than twelve or thirteen.  
  
Lost in the mental landscape of the river, he felt Youji turn in his arms, wrap now strong arms around him, "Anria don't leave, please don't leave me!"  
  
Ken knew the answer, knew the words that would come out of his mouth, over his red painted lips. "Get away from me Manru. I have no need of a poet. Go and screw my husband. Perhaps you will please him more than I."  
  
Only when Youji's spirit started to pull away did Ken return to himself, his present self and scream, drawing more water. "Youji! Wait, please! Youji! Don't go!"  
  
There was just a moment that hung between them, that very last moment before fingers broke contact with each other. Ken thought of the time and the numbers flashed in his mind forty-five minutes, thirty-seven seconds. And this was not molested? They had to get out of here!  
  
Violently, Ken felt himself jerked towards the surface. Youji's fingers latched onto him at just the last possible second and both of them broke the surface. "Oh god," Ken gasped, seeing Youji's face up close for the first time. "Oh fucking god."  
  
"No, not quite," a familiar voice said, and Ken turned to find Kaze standing on a raft, wearing the same injuries that Ken had given him years before. "Welcome to hell, Ken. So nice of you to join us! But then, I could always count on you to get me out of trouble."  
  
Youji's arms wrapped around Ken, pulling him close, protectively. It surprised Ken, this tenderness from his friend, as Shinigami had said Youji wouldn't know him. "Kaze."  
  
"And you remember me. Did you push your friend off the cliff, Ken? You're so fucking self righteous."  
  
"You can't hurt us! We have," Ken thought about it, only fifteen minutes left! How had that happened? "Fifteen minutes."  
  
"I can't hurt 'you', but you don't know how to use Shinigami's watch. I do. Let's you and I leave here together. I'll show you. You're bleeding away all your time keeping that idiot close to you. Only the one with you can open the door back. If you don't get him to agree to go with you, you'll both stay here in Styx forever. You'll relive your past lives, again and again, but I don't think you'll ever win free again, Ken, not coming back here like this. Did you know that you rarely make it to adult hood? I spent a lot of time looking you up, watching your past. You know, I could do that because we've lived together so many times. Let Kudou sink, Ken, take me with you."  
  
Youji's mangled fingers brushed Ken's cheek, caressing him. It turned Ken's stomach and he whirled in Youji's arms. Desperate, confused, Ken grabbed hold of Youji's arms, shook him, only to be horrified by how much give there was in those shoulders. "Youji! Come back with me! Please! Youji, who we are now, we're not the past, we're us. We can start from where we are because we can't pay the debt of all the past."  
  
"Ken? Ken, I threw myself off the cliff."  
  
"I know, I fell with you. If you want, we can go back, both of us."  
  
"Just click the ruby slippers and go home? Ken, you should have just let me go alone. I'm not good for anything."  
  
"Youji, please, don't say things like that. Don't you want to be alive, just a little, Youji?"  
  
"No," Kaze snarled, putting a river pole between Youji's eyes, shoving him away, down under the black ink of the Styx. "He doesn't. Not as badly as I do! He's a worthless whiny uke boy!"  
  
Ken dove after Youji, after the last of dark curls shimmering on the thick surface of the water. Kaze's demon strong hand grabbed the back of Ken's shirt, jerked him completely up out of the water and dropped him on the raft. "Give me the watch, I'll let you go after him, if you can find him at all now. Styx is hungry, you know."  
  
Five minutes, twenty-one seconds remaining, and Ken dove for the water, only to have Kaze grab a handful of hair and jerk him back. "Give me the mother fucking watch, Ken!"  
  
Ken coughed water and failed, becoming the child he'd died as in so many lives. Younger than his present self, young, an amalgamation of his previous lives, he cried as Kaze kicked him. "Give me the watch, brat!"  
  
The raft tilted, but neither of them looked that way, even as the stars were blocked out by the spread of raven dark wings. "I guess I do want to live," Y ouji said. His body now knitted back together, he laid a punch into Kaze's back, then spun him around and put another into a spirit jaw, hitting with more power than Youji had ever had before.  
  
Dryads, water sprites with teeth like piranhas clung to the other side of the raft, snapping slurping. A youngish Ken, scrambled back away from them, and the black angel Youji lifted Kaze from his feet, smiled darkly and tossed the long dead best friend into the water. The dryads swarmed after him.  
  
Youji knelt on the raft and Ken scrambled into his arms, the wings drawing around both of them. "How much time is left?"  
  
"One minute, five seconds," Ken said, searching Youji's still battered face. "What happened? Will you come back to the living with me, Youji? Please."  
  
"I meet a man with long hair, and he said if I forgave myself, I could save you, be your friend."  
  
"What did you need to be forgiven for?" Ken let angel Youji stand him up, hug him close.  
  
"It doesn't matter, Ken. It's forgiven. I love you more than I hated myself, but you know, I'm still a selfish bastard."  
  
"I don't care. Come back with me?"  
  
Youji nodded. "Take me back to the living."  
  
The trip back was fast, a blink of an eye, and Ken found himself standing on the river bank far below the cliff. Youji lay on the sandy beach, looking very much like hell warmed over. Blood covered one leg, soaked into the sand, dyed his hair reddish at the temple. Frigthened, Ken ran to him, dropped to his knees, realized he was kneeling on the imprint of wings in the sand. With trembling fingers he reached down to see if Youji had a pulse, found his wrist broken, but also found a pulse.  
  
Youji's other hand reached over and brushed across Ken's face, leaving dirt and blood. "Thank you."  
  
"Oh Youji! Don't you ever fucking do that again! Do you realize how horrible it is?"  
  
Sirens sounded in the distance, coming closer so quickly. "I'll," youji said, coughed, and Ken helped him turn his head just a little, "I'll be a bigger pain in the ass if I ever feel like that again, keep you up all night talking and shit."  
  
"That's better than going to hell for you! Youji I'm so glad you came back! Youji you're my friend. I'll die if you go! We're in this together, you understand?"  
  
"Yeah, besides. I don't want to live any place where Kaze's at. Low rent district," Youji wheezed, fingers falling away from Ken's cheek. "Thank you, Ken, really."  
  
"You're gonna have to work through the pain and shit while you're alive. I'll help."  
  
"Already did," Youji said, eyes slowly closing.  
  
"Don't you die!" Ken howled, but the sirens had turned into ambulances, cop cars, and Omi spilled out, running towards them. Even Aya was there, tall and fiery alone, but watching from where he stood. Emergency workers moved Ken way and did the opposite of what Weiss did. Instead of taking people apart, they were working efficient and fast to put Youji Kudou back together.  
  
Ken cried, uncontrollable tears and emotional release. Youji screamed as they moved him onto a backboard, then onto a gurney. Omi stood really close, shoulder touching Ken's. "What happened?"  
  
"He fell from the cliff." Ken pointed up to where Youji had jumped from. "And I went through hell to get him."  
  
Aya's eyes followed Youji as he was moved into the ambulance.  
  
"It's important to keep life, Omi. I saw the god of death tonight."  
  
Omi paled and wrapped an arm around Ken's waist, pulling him close. "Youji- kun will be okay. He's strong."  
  
Ken took a deep breath, looked back to the wet sand, where the imprint of angel wings lingered, if you knew what you were looking at. "If everyone can be saved, Youji is probably easier than most."  
  
A look of confusion flitted across Omi's face, but he gave ken a little squeeze. "Let's follow the ambulance. Aya can drive."  
  
One last look at the river, a thought for Kaze. The river looked so normal from here, not the dark ink that Styx had been. Kaze was trapped there, in the dark ink of the Styx. "Maybe it's having to deal with the pain that purifies us, makes us clean. We only think death gets us out of it. I wonder if Kaze will ever find his way out of the river."  
  
"Ne, did you hit your head, Ken?"  
  
And things were back to normal, sort of. "Let's go to the hospital, Omi. I want out find out how Youji is." 


End file.
